Der Flötenspieler

Here, one feels like in the labyrinth of the Minotaur, notes the insurance employee Thomas Waller in his diary. The office building of Perduta Insurance has a lot to it. One gets lost in the maze of walls and furniture, carpets swallow footsteps, and the stairwell is secured with an alarm system. Waller, in his early 30s, registers strange symptoms in himself, which he meticulously documents. Alongside his mental confusion, physical peculiarities arise. His fingers and eyes fail him while playing the flute, and at times he loses his voice. His body becomes foreign to him, and his life threatens to slip away. He meets the medical diagnosis of a masked depression with defensive irony. When a conflict with his wife Mathilda escalates and ends in violence, Waller flees in search of simplicity and authenticity to a mountain village in the Jura. With E., a mute singer, he hopes to rediscover his fundamental tone.

Rudolf Bussmann's novel "The Flutist," first published in 1991, is an impressive work about a progressive self-alienation. Tightly narrated in alternating tones between biting mockery and delicate nature poetry, and underpinned with motifs from Greek mythology, Thomas Waller's records form a timeless journey into the underworld of one's own psyche.